The invention relates to a stimulation system, such as a pelvic nerve or sacral nerve stimulation system, having a tool for programming an electrical stimulation generator, such as an implantable pulse generator (IPG), of the system.
A sacral nerve stimulator is a device used to provide electrical stimulation to the pelvic region of a patient, for example the sacral nerve or the pudendal nerve, in order to treat problems such as incontinence. The stimulator includes an implanted or external pulse generator and an implanted stimulation lead having one or more electrodes at a distal location thereof. The pulse generator provides the stimulation through the electrodes via a body portion and connector of the lead. Stimulation programming in general refers to the configuring of stimulation electrodes and stimulation parameters to treat the patient using one or more implanted leads and its attached IPG. For example, the programming is typically achieved by selecting individual electrodes and adjusting the stimulation parameters, such as the shape of the stimulation waveform, amplitude of current in mA (or amplitude of voltage in V), pulse width in microseconds, frequency in Hz, and anodic or cathodic stimulation.
Despite recent advances in medical technology, existing sacral nerve stimulation methods, systems, and devices still have various shortcomings. For example, in order to determine the efficacy of stimulation and the implant site for an implantable pulse generator, test stimulation may be applied to a patient via an external trial stimulator. Conventional systems and methods for performing test stimulation have been cumbersome and may require a lot of manual involvement from the clinician, thereby leading to potentially ineffective test stimulation or other mistakes/errors. Therefore, although existing systems and methods for performing sacral nerve stimulation are generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects.